The invention concerns a barrel-shaped bearing having an external ring, an internal ring, and at least one row of barrel-shaped rolling bodies arranged between the rings. At least one disk-shaped cage which revolves together with the rolling bodies, engages in an encircling groove of the rolling bodies of one row and, on its outer circumference, has a number of recesses corresponding to the number of rolling bodies of a row thereof.
An arrangement of the generic type can be seen in German patent specification 663 179. This reference shows a spherical roller bearing, with rolling bodies having a stepped cross section and rolling with their distal regions on the external ring and their proximal regions on the internal ring. However, in this arrangement, first, an unfavorable force profile is produced by the rolling bodies being subjected not only to compressive stress but also to bending stress, and secondly, the axial space required by this bearing is comparatively large. However, the fact that, even if there is a small pivoting of the external ring in relation to the remaining bearing components, as is possible for barrel-shaped bearings, one of the two contact surfaces between the rolling bodies and the outer ring can rapidly wear away, which is an even more serious disadvantage. Due to the transverse moments acting on the rolling bodies, this results in instability of the relevant, barrel-shaped rolling body which may prevent their return, which is required during further rotation of the bearing, to the running surface of the external ring and in such a case will lead to the destruction of the bearing. Further, the disk-type cage is unable to provide any sort of stabilization, since it guides the rolling bodies exclusively in their tangential position, but not in the radial direction.